Anyone who spent the 70s in Israel must have slow-danced to Mike Brant’s Laisse-moi t’aimer (Let me love you) at least once. Mike Brant was a huge pop star back in the day, with several hit songs in French: Qui saura, L’Amour c’est ça, l’amour c’est toi, C’est ma prière, Dis-lui (a French version of Feelings), and many more. The sultry-voiced singer with classic good looks grew up in Haifa determined to make it in music, singing in English and French and changing his name from Moshe to the catchier Mike. Following his star, he began performing abroad, and shot to fame at the tender age of 22 when French singer Sylvie Vartan heard him at the Baccara club in Teheran and liked his style. Get ready to swoon…
It’s a pop Cinderella story, but the ending is sad. Brant, the son of Holocaust survivors from Poland, suffered from bouts of depression possibly linked to Second Generation Syndrome. Following a failed suicide attempt in 1974, he leapt to his death from his apartment in France on April 25, 1975. He was 28 years old, and had just released his second album, Dis-lui.
Israeli director Eytan Fox (Cupcakes, The Bubble, Yossi & Jagger) is making a film of Mike Brant’s life, scheduled to begin shooting in Spring 2015. The well-researched film relies not only on Brant’s much-documented young life, but conversations with Sylvie Vartan and Mike’s brother Zvi Brand, a co-writer on the screenplay with Fox and Shiri Artzi. The film will include archival footage and the songs will all be from original recordings of Mike Brant.
Who will play Mike? That is always the toughest question in any biopic, there’s nothing more difficult than casting someone in the role of someone well known and much admired. 20 year old Omer Dror has just been cast in the lead, and although young, he is not without experience. The very hot actor certainly has the looks to carry the role of a teen heartthrob, and he’s already starred in the Israeli series Galis and HaAlifim. Where have you seen those handsome features before? Everywhere – he’s the house model of Castro.
The film is an international production led by Alain Goldman, owner of Légende Productions (La Vie En Rose – Edith Piaf biopic 2007) with Israeli producers Moshe and Leon Edry and United Films, and Avot HaMeiri, Ronen Ben Tal and Gal Uchovsky.
